Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

"Here's how it works," said Ali. "Man hands you a package. You don't touch, you don't smell it, and you don't look at it. A little later, the man tells you take a walk, see a movie for a couple of hours, leave the door open. The man brings in his people, and they cut the shit up. You come back, the package is history, and you got a grand sitting on your table. That's it."

"Who's the man?"

"You heard of Benny Mastracci?"

Paxton had not. He said, "Sure."

"Yeah. Call him the Hammer. Benny the Hammer. Man you don't want to fuck with. But his money's good."

"How come you know him? I thought you were through with that shit."

Ali laughed. "Yeah, that's what everybody thinks. That's how come Benny likes to use me, you dig? That's the fuckin' point."

After a brief pause, Paxton laughed, too. Fuckin' Ali. It was nice to have friends.

Ralphie Paxton met Benny the Hammer late on the following day, a knock on his door and there he was. He looked just like those guys did in the movies, in a sharp black suit, an ugly, hard-faced little white guy, with two big white guys with him, also in suits, with open collars and gold chains. They barged in and checked the place out, noting with approval the grilles on the windows and the police lock on the door. The stuff was in a duffel bag. One of the big guys stuffed it into a closet.

Benny had a gravelly voice, also as established by the movies. He said, "Ali tells me you're a straight-up guy, or I wouldn't be here. But let's understand each other. There's six plastic bags in there, and I know what's in them down to the gram. I know what's in them, and when we come back, the same thing's gonna be in them as what's in them now. If not, for any reason, Rocco and Vinnie over there's gonna stick your head in a tub of cement until it dries. No warning, no second chances, no excuses-that's just the way we work. You understand what I'm telling you?"

The man's little ape eyes bored into his, and Ralphie Paxton understood.

Guma's voice on the phone was artificially low and conspiratorial: "The package is delivered. The eagle has landed. The plume of my aunt is in the second shelf."

Karp laughed. "You love this shit, Guma."

"What can I say? I missed my calling."

"Did you scare him?"

"He was pissing himself. I brought Rocco and Vinnie Luna for effect. I thought Vinnie was gonna crack up, but he managed to turn it into an evil grin. I hear it was no bill on Marshak."

"Like we expected. A black guy comes at you with a knife in a parking garage, the classic nightmare of scared America. Thank God she had a gun is the usual response."

"You got anything else you want me to do? Besides crawling through tunnels."

"No, nothing right now-and thanks, Goom. I owe you big."

"You bet you do. I'm sending you a bill."

Karp turned off the cordless and put it down on the coffee table. "That was Guma."

His wife put down her headphones and paused the tape she was listening to. "Did he do it?"

"So he says."

"You don't look very happy about it."

"I'm not," said Karp. "I want this to be over. This is hell. But I don't want to talk about my legal daintiness anymore. How's your stolen phone calls going?"

"The kid did a good job. It was like I figured. Oleg had a positive tip this kidnapping was going down. He had a man in the group that did it. These here are conversations with his man on the scene, Ilya, who that guy reported to. Oleg knew the time and the place of the snatch and where they were hiding Perry. He declined to intervene. Result: an international incident, beaucoup press, and he goes in and gets them out two days before the IPO, guaranteeing all the bozos who make up the bull market will buy the stock: 'Duh, Osborne, I heard of them, think I'll buy a thousand.' Basically, it's what happens when the KGB discovers capitalism. They love the money, but they don't quite get it."

"So you're going to blow the whistle?"

"In a manner of speaking," said Marlene in a tone that did not encourage probing. "You'll be interested to know we have a line on Canman, or Mike Dugan does. Lucy's going over to Old St. Pat's tonight to get the scoop from this guy who's apparently the king of the mole people."

After a considering pause, Karp said, "I'm not sure I like Lucy getting involved in this. Why don't you go?"

"Because I have other stuff to do, and because Lucy is quite competent enough to collect some information."

"But that's it, right? Just information."

"She really wants to find Canman. He's a friend."

"He's a serial killer."

"I thought Cooley was the serial killer."

"There are enough killings to go around for the two of them," snapped Karp. "You need to back me up on this, Marlene. I don't want Lucy going anywhere near those tunnels."

"She has Tran to watch her."

"Yet another serial killer. I mean it, Marlene."

"I know you mean it, but we've been through this I don't know how many times before. You want to be protective and a good daddy, but the choice is either backing her up when she wants to do stuff you think might be risky, or forbidding her and making her feel guilty when she goes ahead and does it anyway. She's seventeen now and it's only going to get worse. At least she's not riding every Saturday night in the back of a pickup driven by a drunk teenager, like half the kids her age in America."

"That's not the same thing."

"No, it's a lot more scary than looking for a guy in a tunnel while holding hands with the most dangerous man in North America and his numerous associates."

"I want her right next to me, then."

"Good. It'll be a family thing, then, like the magazines are always telling us to do," Marlene said with finality, and slipped on the headphones.

It had taken Lucy some time to get used to the man's stench, compared to which Jingles's fierce pong was that of a baby fresh from the bath. The man had to actually be rotting, or have dead animals trapped between the layers of his clothes. He was playing chess with the priest in a room in the basement of the church. They were playing slowly and silently, and after the first half hour she gave up following the game. Lucy was the worst chess player in her family. She had never beaten either of her parents, and recently even Zak had knocked her off, amid merciless laughter. Whatever brain cells were used for chess in normal people had clearly been displaced in her head by those devoted to language: the tricky tonalities of Hmong reigning in place of the King's Indian defense. After a brief greeting, Father Dugan had returned his attention to the board. The other man had not responded to her at all, which miffed her, and so she passed the time staring rudely at him. There was a good deal to see. He was big, for one thing; his head was like a slightly deflated basketball, covered with a wool cap that was kelly green under the grime. The ear she could see was only a fringe of greased cartilage around a black hole, for the man had clearly been in a bad fire at some time. His face, riven with scars and discolored grafts, was tugged subtly out of place so that one side seemed to smile as the other frowned. Lucy was on the frowning side. He had an untreated cleft palate and a harelip, too, and his eyes were of two different colors, one black, the other a misty hazel. Spare Parts, indeed, although the priest called him Jacob.

"'Eck," said Spare Parts.

The priest let out a regretful sigh and a low chuckle. He moved a piece. His opponent responded. Then a brief flurry of moves and the man said, "'Eck 'ate."

The priest toppled his king, winked at Lucy, rose, and said, "Good game. Thank you, Jacob. Why don't I make us some tea? I think there's some old doughnuts left from a committee meeting, too."

Dugan left. Spare Parts said nothing, but slowly replaced the pieces on the board. His hands were huge and showed red in fissures where the skin was not black with filth.